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Missing email from external POP server


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Posted

In Options | SpamCop Tools | Configure external POP servers I have a number of external servers set up since approximately a year back. I have two accounts set up with the domain free.fr . Since approximately a week ago, SpamCop no longer fetches mail from one of them (aviator[at]free.fr), while the other one works normally. What's up? :(

I know that there's lots and lots of spam coming there, but that's why I have the account. :)

Posted

Wierd ... I thought that I'd stumbled across free.fr just recently, but all I see in a search "here" is at http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=3029 which appears to be another user with that service involved, but a whole different issue. (Did you also post this recently over in the newsgroups?)

Anyway, have you looked at the FAQ yet? One of the suggestions there is to at least tickle that specific account, if not go all the way and delete/re-create it to see if that clears the 'blockage' ...? First things first .....

Posted
(Did you also post this recently over in the newsgroups?) 

Anyway, have you looked at the FAQ yet?  One of the suggestions there is to at least tickle that specific account,  if not go all the way and delete/re-create it to see if that clears the 'blockage' ...?  First things first .....

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Yes, I posted in the spamcop newsgroup, and one of the replies suggested this forum. I have certainly looked at the FAQ, but haven't found any content relevant to my problem. Anyway, I deleted and recreated the entry for the aviator[at]free.fr account, but no joy. Thereafter I changed the password for the aviator[at]free.fr account on the free.fr website, and then SpamCop, on the external POP servers page, told me of an incorrect password. To me this appears to indicate that SpamCop is indeed attempting at least to contact aviator[at]free.fr . Next I changed the password in the external POP servers page, but still no joy.... And I know that there is a week's worth of emails (at present count 272) waiting to be downloaded by SpamCop.....

Grateful for any help.

Posted
I have certainly looked at the FAQ, but haven't found any content relevant to my problem.

OK, I'll have to agree .. the entry in the FAQ 'here' titled "Emailed spam Submissions Disappearing?, No Confirmation e-mails?" doesn't actually sound like it addresses your issue, however .... the last section contains some pertinent details ... Looks like it's time to start another FAQ entry ....

Anyway, I deleted and recreated the entry for the aviator[at]free.fr account, but no joy. Thereafter I changed the password for the aviator[at]free.fr account on the free.fr website, and then SpamCop, on the external POP servers page, told me of an incorrect password. To me this appears to indicate that SpamCop is indeed attempting at least to contact aviator[at]free.fr .  Next I changed the password in the external POP servers page, but still no joy.... And I know that there is a week's worth of emails (at present count 272) waiting to be downloaded by SpamCop.....

Excellent methodology in use there. Unfortunately, it appears that you've got it narrowed down to a specific situation where the only good place now to get the specific problem thing is going to have be the logs at free.fr and/or here. I've no idea how much work the folks there will put in for you .. and it is a week-end here. As in the above suggested Forum FAQ intry, what I'd suggest here is to kick what data you can collect and provided as much specific stuff such that when JT hits the system, all the data neded will be at his hands so he can do a quick scan of the logs at his end and see what's actually happening.

It does sound confusing, one account working, the password change being recognized ... the one possibility that stands out is that there is a message that is totally hosed, and the hand-shaking just can't work around it. If you were doing your own POP3 access, what you'd normally see is say 27 new e-mails, things would start downloading, then say around message #7, things would just sit there and look dumb ... until somebody finally decided to toss out a time-out flag or drop the connection. I'm guessing that a spam-over-run account isn't something to be thrilled to handle, but ... can you access it directly and rule out this possibility? (just something to try while waiting for the week-end to finsh itself out <g>)

Posted
Excellent methodology in use there.  Unfortunately, it appears that you've got it narrowed down to a specific situation where the only good place now to get the specific problem thing is going to have be the logs at free.fr and/or here.  I've no idea how much work the folks there will put in for you .. and it is a week-end here.  As in the above suggested Forum FAQ intry, what I'd suggest here is to kick what data you can collect and provided as much specific stuff such that when JT hits the system, all the data neded will be at his hands so he can do a quick scan of the logs at his end and see what's actually happening. 

It does sound confusing, one account working, the password change being recognized ... the one possibility that stands out is that there is a message that is totally hosed, and the hand-shaking just can't work around it. If you were doing your own POP3 access, what you'd normally see is say 27 new e-mails, things would start downloading, then say around message #7, things would just sit there and look dumb ... until somebody finally decided to toss out a time-out flag or drop the connection.  I'm guessing that a spam-over-run account isn't something to be thrilled to handle, but ... can you access it directly and rule out this possibility?  (just something to try while waiting for the week-end to finsh itself out <g>)

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JT,

Thanks to Wazoo for the reply above. I'm consolidating pertinent aspects of my previous postings and adding some additional info which might be useful, come Monday. Here goes:

For the past five years I have had two email accounts with free.fr, a reputable ISP based in France, and definitely not a fly-by-night operation. However, how much effort an ISP who is not receiving any remuneration from me will be willing to put into researching logs etc. is of course an open question; my marginal abilities in the French language is another factor.....

For the past eighteen months or so I have had my two accounts activated on the "Configure external POP servers" page, and there has been no difficulty in retrieving email via SpamCop. About a week ago I no longer got any mail from one of the accounts, aviator[at]free.fr . This is the account with the heaviest traffic; the other account is still working normally via SpamCop, which I have verified by sending myself emails from an ISP based in North America.

I have tried to rectify the problem by deleting the account from the "Configure external POP servers" page and then re-entering it, but unsuccessfully. Thereafter I have changed the password for aviator[at]free.fr on the Free.fr website, and after this is the "Configure external POP servers" has told me that the password was invalid, so it appears that SpamCop is actually trying to fetch the email on aviator[at]free.fr, but without success. Then I have changed the password on "Configure external POP servers", still with no success in receiving mail from the aviator[at]free.fr account via SpamCop.

In Outlook Express I have opened a mail account for aviator[at]free.fr, making sure to instruct the program to leave mail on server. All 277 emails on the free.fr server download properly. I thereafter have tried to access the aviator[at]free.fr account from mail2web.com, and all 277 emails appear there.

I don't really want to appear paranoid, by the suspicion is beginning to grow in my mind that since I have reported a good deal of spam from the aviator[at]free.fr account via SpamCop (and virtually none from the other free.fr account, the address of which is known to very few other people) over the past 18 months, maybe free.fr, due to pressure from spammers, has decided to block access to the aviator[at]free.fr account from the IP address that SpamCop is using? Just a thought; anyway, I would be most grateful if you could check SpamCop's logs.

Many thanks in advance.

Posted

(not quoting anything

Just to note something that Wazoo may wish to add to a FAQ entry dealing with with this situation.)

* This probably doesn't apply to the poster's problem, but Spamcop email doesn't download all emails from a POP source.

I have noticed that it leaves behind "blank emails". These have been discussed on the NG and forums from time to time and are thought often to be the result of broken spamming software or idiot beyond the call of their profession spammers.

"blank emails" typically have no body, no To: or From: and often no Subject:

I get none to ten a day, mixed in with 100 spams and these remain on my email account until I get round to Popping them directly to get rid of them.

Other malformed emails may be treated in the same way.

It is thus possible for there to be lots of emails that Spamcop will never download but OE (say) will.

Posted
..... Wazoo may wish to add to a FAQ entry dealing with with this situation.

..... Spamcop email doesn't download all emails from a POP source.

I have noticed that it leaves behind "blank emails". These have been discussed on the NG and forums from time to time and are thought often to be the result  of broken spamming software or idiot beyond the call of their profession spammers.

"blank emails" typically have no body, no To: or From: and often no Subject:

I get none to ten a day, mixed in with 100 spams and these remain on my email account until I get round to Popping them directly to get rid of them.

Other malformed emails may be treated in the same way.

It is thus possible for there to be lots of emails that Spamcop will never download but OE (say) will.

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Michaelanglo,

Thank you for this post, you just solved my problem! :):):)

After reading your message above, I checked my aviator[at]free.fr for blank emails via mail2web.com . There turned out to be three of them, among them the very first one. From mail2web.com I deleted only that one, and within five minutes SpamCop had retrieved some 100 emails (and with some 190 still left on the aviator[at]free.fr account). Then I proceded to delete the other two blank emails, plus a couple of other messages that contained a sender name but no subject, for good measure. Voilà! Within ten minutes my aviator[at]free.fr account had been emptied.

So my question is now: Is it possible to modify SpamCop to fetch also blank emails, to avoid similar situations to the one that I had?

Posted

Crushed, as I thought I'd covered the same ground .. but thanks to michaelanglo for using the right words to make it clear enough for aviator to resolve the problem. Kudos to all involved.

aviator - when I said to "contact JT" I really did mean "contact JT" <g> He does pop in here every now and then, but I'm pretty sure that he doesn't read everything (just an opinion) ... Some things I'll go ahead and send up to him for his touch, but when dealing with accounts, I've no idea what the actual SpamCop account may be for a user posting in here, so my heads-up is a bit useless as I don't have the data to point him to ....

As far as "fixing this problem" .. that's a hard one. That you were able to reach out and delete the problem e-mails is a good thing. But I know for a fact that the typical ISP account either needs a phone call for someone there to delete the problem e-mail or some tools or knowledge beyond the typical user to reach in and do it themselves. Trying to state that the issue pointed out here is not a rarity. The usual "symptom" is just as I tried to explain it previously, although expanding that description now to include the example of a dial-up modem user trying to retrieve that 5Meg file sent by the broadband user .. and figuring that after a half-hour or so of watching that "downloading" thing going on, figures it's broken, powers down, re-boots, and tries again .. and again .. and again .. until the aforementioned phone call or other access methods.tools are used.

Posted

Heh, glad to be useful.

All my experience has been with malformed emails that Spamcop silently skipped (but processed others) rather than with ones that Spamcop found so objectionable it stopped processing so preventing the later ones from being downloaded.

to get just one or two emails to download I found you could hit the _cancel_ button on the "sending and receiving" if your email client has such a thing.

Wazoo refers to users not having the software to delete problem emails. In fact it is more that they don't have the skills.

One of my ISPs (Freeserve, now Wanadoo) provides instructions on how to do this if other methods fail. This involves using Telnet (comes with Windows) to issue POP commands. I do NOT recommend its use to the inexperienced.

How to delete a stuck email using the Web (wanadoo users only)

http://www.wanadoo.co.uk/help/email/webblo..._blocked_emails

(at the bottom) links to

How to delete a stuck email using Telnet (Windows 95, 98 & ME)

How to delete a stuck email using Telnet (Windows 2000 & XP)

How to delete a stuck email using Mail2Web

Hope this is a useful reference.

Posted

As the others have posted, occasionally we've had problems with specific emails. In every case I've seen, either the email was really malformed or the POP server was giving us illegal data. However, when it's possible we've tried to work around this. We currently have several "hacks" in place to work around common bugs in POP servers.

The only way we can figure out what's happening for sure, though, is to see it in action. I've corresponded with aviator already, but if someone else sees a problem, let me know.

It is possible that a bad message would cause your POP to get "stuck" and no further messages would ever get retrieved. This is because every time we go to POP, that message is first and the whole thing gets aborted. Definitely let me know if you see this happening.

JT

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